Fashion Statement
by Bandicoot Sauce
Summary: A short one-shot focusing on everyone's favourite 'evil' gothic teenager. Slight romantic references, but mosty just humor.


**Fashion Statement**

Castle Cortex stood tall, proud and ominous on the aptly named Cortex Island. It was a place that emanated an air of dominance, power and evil.

That's what it usually emanated, anyway. It didn't have that quality when a certain yellow skinned, big-headed, overbearing, bumbling evil scientist was marching through the corridors, yelling the names of his various cohorts.

"Nerfarious!" Cortex called, rapping his fists on one of the hallway's many metal doors. "NEFARIOUS!"

The door slid up _Star Trek_ style and N. Tropy stood there, looking quite annoyed. Having just got out of bed, the pale blue master of time was wearing little more than a casual T-shirt and rather unbecoming shorts. His minimal black hair was sticking up in places. Though his gold armour was not currently on his person, Tropy still clutched his prized oversized tuning fork in one hand. "You don't have to yell, Doctor. I'm not deaf." he stated simply. "I knew five minutes ago that you would want to see me."

"Then you should've come down to the briefing room FIVE MINUTES AGO!" Cortex declared. He was in a bad mood, and Tropy could plainly see why. Someone - Probably N. Gin - had painted the metallic letter 'N' in the centre of Cortex's fat head a bright shade of pink. While N. Gin was very loyal to Cortex, he did tend to be a little- No, a _lot_ crazy. Cortex stormed off, now screaming for his niece (arguably daughter). "Nina! NINA!

From her bedroom, which was on the next floor, Nina let out a heavy sigh. She could hear her uncle screaming his head off. He always got like this when he didn't get his morning coffee (which he usually just threw in N. Gin's face anyway). The goth girl with the metal hands made no attempt to respond to her uncle's yells. She had problems of her own. She was currently trying to fix her hair and make-up, but it wasn't going too well.

"What's wrong with this stupid thing?" Nina demanded aloud, staring at the hair dryer in her hand. "Set it on 'Low Heat' and I get 'High Heat'! Set it on 'High Heat' and I get zapped!" Frustrated, she cast the device aside. "Ah, never mind! I'll just comb it over for now!"

Nina finished with her hair and hurriedly applied some dark eyeliner, pulled on her black coat and combat boots, polished her hands, applied yet another layer of black lipstick to her lips and then left the room, only to groan in annoyance when a particularly loud rendition of her name rang out. She turned around, headed back into the bedroom and locked the door. She then marched over to her desk, sat down in her chair, opened the top drawer and pulled out a framed photo she kept hidden in there. She held the photo in her hands, stared at it and sighed dreamily, her heart all aflutter. This photo was all that kept her going, which was strange, considering who was pictured in it. The greatest thorn in the side of both her and her uncle, the one who stood firmly in the way of evil's progress, the one who she and all of her peers had been trained to kill on sight…

"NIIIIIIINA!"

_BANG, BANG, BANG._

Nina hurriedly put the photo of Crash Bandicoot back in the drawer and locked it, hearing her uncle pounding on her bedroom door. She suppressed a sigh, unlocked the door remotely and called "Come in." in a tone of forced calm.

The door slid up and Cortex marched in, looking ready to kill the first person who breathed. Fortunately, he didn't have his prized ray gun with him at present.

"Well?" he demanded, his face now uncomfortably close to hers, giving her a clear view of the now pink edition of the evil scientist's permanent head accessory. "Say something!"

It hadn't been N. Gin who had done this. Nina had sneaked into her uncle's room the night before and graffitied Cortex's trademark headwear. She didn't know why she had done it, but done it she had. He had been yelling at her yesterday worse than he was today. Nina supposed that he had pushed her over the edge and that she had reacted before she could stop herself. She couldn't remember much about how it had happened. All she really remembered was staring at that photo of Crash beforehand. She remembered that glossy orange fur, those luminous green eyes, those surprisingly stylish blue jeans, that dazzling - if not goofy - smile…

"I don't get the fashion statement." Nina said simply, allowing a little smugness to seep into her smart-alecky words. Cortex looked like he might throttle her with his bare hands, but as far as he knew, there was someone around here far more worthy of a good throttling.

"N. GIN!" he roared, storming out of the room and down the corridor. "I WANT TO SEE YOU RIGHT _NOW!"_

When she was alone, Nina sighed. "I shouldn't have done it." she mused, feeling guilty. She got out the picture of Crash again and continued to stare at it, her smile growing to match his. Nina couldn't remember the last time she had smiled like this.

"I should've drawn a moustache on Uncle Neo's stupid old face as well." she declared, chuckling lightly.

* * *

><p><strong>Well, that's it. Let me know if you liked it in the reviews, and let me know if you'd like to see more Crash fanfics from me. Peace out.<strong>


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